Great question Kelly, great question.
the duke's, sagebrush and the prairie club...
I'm not saying that's what we built, I'm saying that's what we heard from various sources: owners, designers, shapers, people passing by...
And it's not necessarily negative depending of the context, but overall, if the entire golf world goes this way it's going to be negative.
Let's take The Prairie Club: longer, deeper, steeper and more is something that I've heard there, BUT it works there!!! I mean, The Prairie Club (the entire development concept) is about an outstanding and unique golf experience, so who cares if you add a tee here and there and that strecthes the course to 8000 + yards... it's not like there's no more room available in that part of Nebraska.
I mean you travel 10 hours to get there and have fun. You can compose your course if you want and play the super back tee at 4 and the forward tee at 5.
People there understood that, it's going to be a place where the game would be a little more informal, more adventurous, maybe closer to the beginning of golf: you've got a large landscape to play on, the hole is over there, there are a couple of dead zone in the way.. it's a match against you buddy, have fun. Playing The Prairie Club in stroke play is probably only reserved for the best of the best, in match play, it's for everybody.
Although I love a place like Garden City, built that 20 minutes away from Valentine NE, I doubt you'll stay open a long time... The Prairie Club is a place where it's OK to go out of scale, the site is out of scale
BUT, if the entire golf world goes for 8000 yards courses, that means you'll need at least 180 acres to built a course, more irrigation, more construction cost, more maintenance.... then it's going to be negative for the game of golf.
Sagebrush was built a bit in the same spirit.
The Duke's was purposely going on the spectacular side, because the look of the course is different than any other in Scotland. My main concern was more about length there, when it comes down to shooting for a number. For the bunkering and all that, I think it's a fairly well balanced course because of the width.
Often I had my head shaking at first, but I understand that I was not working on special circomstance.
As I said, if we applied the longer deeper steeper more philosophy everywhere and you have to manufacture stuff to get there, then it's going to ruin the game.
Finally, on all those projects, there was some talented and knowledgeable people on site to think and built the course so a sense of balance, proportion, relation between penalty and width etc... kept the course on the right track.
in the end, I'd prefer to see more courses built in the frame of Elie, Panmure, Montebello and High Pointe than the ones above, it would be better for Golf.
A good reading for your life: A short history of progress, it's about society but it could apply to golf, basically asking:is more better?